On a massive turnover of more than 105 million shares, White Cliff Minerals' stock surged more than eight per cent today after the company revealed multiple copper rock-chip samples grading more than 50 per cent from its Rae project in Canada’s Nunavut territory.
The final assays taken from the company’s maiden field program confirmed the presence of high-grade copper mineralisation in two of its new prospects, Rocket and Thor, suggesting what management believes is widespread mineralisation across the region.
At the Rocket prospect, White Cliff made the major discovery of three parallel chalcocite-dominant vein systems when sampled across a 380m strike length. The best results included five samples with copper grades running higher than 50 per cent and silver concentrations of up to 60 grams per tonne.
Thor, 20km to the west, unearthed an 800m-long zone of high-grade copper, with one sample returning 54.02 per cent copper and 34g/t silver.
Of the 84 samples taken at the prospects, more than half of the assays came in with higher than 20 per cent copper and included multiple showings of chalcocite-bornite vein and breccia systems. The newly-reported assays mark the end of the company's 2024 fieldwork campaign and will form part of the analysis that will go towards defining drilling targets next year.
White Cliff Minerals managing director Troy Whittaker said: “Similar to Vision, to the north-west, these two newly-confirmed areas at Rocket and Thor have delivered extraordinary and extensive copper grades across what is now a very large overall area. More than half of the samples taken from these projects returned results of more than 20% Copper. As this represents the final round of assays, the geological team has delivered exceptional results – including assays that may in fact represent the highest-grade copper and silver rock chip results in recent history.”
Whittaker went on to say that he was pleased that the aerial geophysics data from the next generation MobileMT survey has now moved to the analysis, interpretation, audit and validation stage, with results expected in the next few weeks.
As the first pass of any modern project-scale geophysics on the region, the survey has given White Cliff a clear view of what is going on beneath the surface. By using the magnetic data, it should be able to pinpoint the controlling structures, while the conductivity response will help it to zero in on key hot spots – similar to its Hulk sediment-hosted copper target that lies 60km to the north-west.
The company appears to have made the most of its summer exploration window at Rae, pulling in close to 150 samples across its 2500-square-kilometres tenement holdings that span more than 49km of strike length within the Rae Group sediments. The samples taken earlier in the season from the Vision exploration district, 40km north-west of Thor and Rocket, included hits of 62 per cent, 50.48 per cent and 43.77 per cent copper, with associated silver peaking at 223g/t.
Taken in conjunction with the latest and equally impressive results, White Cliff will have much to ponder during the winter down-season. But one thing is for sure, it will be spoilt for target choice next year when the rigs finally hit the ground running.
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By James Pearson
